Swimming Pools
by Mad-Wizard-in-221b
Summary: The Doctor has always been a little over protective of his companions. But when the Doctor finds out the truth about Clara, he gives up, once and for all. Trigger warning for suicidal!Doctor. New summary because the old one sucked. ON HIATUS, COULD BE ABANDONED.
1. Swimming Pools

The Doctor stood at the edge of the pool in the gynasium of the TARDIS - a room he'd forgotten was there until earlier that day. He looked down at the reflection in the water. Heavily lidded eyes with dark circles around them, framed by an extremely pale face, curtained by a dull, uncharacteric lump of limp brown hair on his head. He'd had enough. Not nearly three hours ago, Clara, his newest companion, and as he'd found out, his daughter, had nearly been killed. The Doctor couldn't bare to lose Clara. She needed to live. She didn't deserve the same fate as her mother, or companions previous.

The Doctor had lived too long and stolen away the lives of too many. He was going to end it tonight. In this very pool, in this very room, in his TARDIS. She was humming worriedly, trying to make him change his mind.

"No, it's too late," He murmured, "I don't want Clara to die. She can't die. She's too important - she's too special." A tear filed itself over his eyelid and rolled down his cheek, followed by rivers more. The Doctor stepped closer to the edge of the pool - it was deep. His toes were by the edge now. He closed his eyes, more tears working their way down his face.

"Doctor? Doctor, where are you?" Clara's voice echoed up the hall of the TARDIS. The Doctor didn't want her to see this. She didn't deserve to see it. But she found him.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" She stared wide eyed at him.

He blinked, "Doing what should've happened years ago." he croaked, "I haven't deserved to live this long. I've destroyed too many lives for the sake of my own sanity. Tonight it's ending." He took a deep breath, and held out his arms.

Clara took the hint as to what he was doing. "No! Doctor, no, I need you!" The Doctor took another step towards to pool. His toe-tips were hanging over the edge now. It wasn't long. "Doctor, please! Don't go! There's still so much you've got to d-"

"THERE ISN'T!" He yelled, "THERE'S ONLY MORE LIVES THAT ARE GOING TO BE DESTROYED BECAUSE OF ME! YOU NEARLY DIED TONIGHT BECAUSE YOU WERE PROTECTING ME! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE IF YOU KEEP GOING WITH ME, SO TAKE THE HINT, AND LEAVE! LET ME DO THIS IN PEACE, AND SO YOU DON'T SEE IT!" He was crying heavily now, tears splattering on his tweed jacket, over his shoulders awkwardly. "JUST TAKE THE BLOODY HINT AND LEAVE, CLARA!"

"NO!" Clara roared back at him, "I'M NOT LETTING YOU DO THIS!" She ran forward, taking his arms and pulling them behind him, trying to take him away from the edge of the pool. The Doctor let out a strangled yell in a language Clara couldn't understand, trying to shake her off him. He succeeded, shoving her out of the door, and she fell to the ground, staring with pleading eyes. She stood again.

Clara shook her head, stepping forward to stop him, but he told her no. "The TARDIS will take you back to your time and your place." He whispered. He took another step. The Doctor's feet were half-way over, and he was lucky he didn't over balence and fall over then and there. He breathed deeply again. Clara was still outside the door of the room. "TARDIS, close this room's door!" He commanded.

While the TARDIS let out a disapproving whirr, she slammed the door, leaving Clara in shock, until she began banging hard on it. "Once I'm gone, let her come back in, say goodbye and all." He whispered.

"Geronimo," The Doctor breathed his last word out quietly.

Yet another step. He was in the pool.

He floated there, face down. Still holding his breath at that moment. He face began to go purple, and he wanted to rise to the surface again, but he knew he couldn't. Once his lungs felt like they would explode from lack of oxygen, he opened his mouth. He breathed in through his nose. The Doctor felt his lungs filled with water, and his head become heavy with it. He opened his eyes, the chlorinated pool stinging them, bit kept them open still.

The Doctor breathed in. Stars filled his visions as he began to sink. Sink into the cold bottom of the pool, where he'd die. The world faded slowly, leaving nothing back black and he hit the bottom of the pool. He was dead. No regenerating. Just dead.

Clara banged on the door violently. The splashes from inside worried her, and she hoped that the Doctor han't taken the plunge, and had swam back to the surface.

But the TARDIS made a mournful humming noise and the door to the room with the pool opened slowly, and Clara crawled inside. The Doctor was no where to be found. She ran over to the pool, catching sight of a large human-shaped thing at the bottom. The Doctor.

Clara, not caring for the fact that she was fully clothed in her favourite spotted-white black top, jumped into the pool and dived to the Doctor. She hooked her arms under his, and with impressive skill, carried herself and the Doctor's dead weight to the surface.

Clara pushed his body up first, then, jumping out the pool, checked his neck for a pulse, his wrist too, and his nose and mouth for breathing.

All attempts to find life in him were fruitless. The Doctor was gone. "No, Doctor! Wake up!" She pleaded, shaking him, "Do that thing - regenerating - that you told me about!" Tears clouded Clara's vision as she shook him harder, "Doctor, wake up! Don't leave!" But he'd already left.

Clara tried everything to return life to the Doctor. She pressed on his chest, gave him mouth-to-mouth, but she'd got nothing. Clara gave up. She put her arms on his chest, and cried, violently hard.

She'd failed the Doctor.

But the Doctor didn't think so.

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_**A/N: Thanks for reading. Two reviews/faves and I'll post another chapter. c:**_

_**-Rave/Berry**_


	2. Empty Halls

_**A/N: Well, not even been one day and this has two faves and three follows. So here we are - chapter two! By the way guys, I doubt I'm gonna actually branch this off into a series. I'm way too lazy.**_

_**Onwards to chapter two! Short chapter gaiz, sorry. ;w;**_

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Hours passed. Clara had moved the Doctor from the gymnasium of the TARDIS to a bedroom with a red postbox and a starry door that was obviously was his room. Clara was still beside his bed, crying.

"Doctor...oh my God, I should've tried to help you! I'm so bloody stupid...I should have seen the signs of his getting weaker." She sobbed. "He was getting skinny, he was pale as a bloody post...he was getting sadder day by day..."

Clara looked at the still form on the bed. The Doctor's body was still soaking wet, as was she, and she knew that sooner or later she'd be sneezing and coughing. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

The TARDIS made a mournful sound, almost a sing-song voice echoing through the once-lively halls of the now cold and empty ship. Something above her clicked, and Clara looked up as a hologram of the Doctor appeared before her.

"Holo-interface intialised," The hologram stated, "Hello, Clara. If you're seeing this, you know what's happen. I've committed my own suicide or been killed by some angry alien race. No need to worry though - I'll be fine.

"If, in the case of a suicide, say 'suicide', or if I was killed by some angry race, say 'alien'."

Clara stared for a moment. The holo-Doctor waited for her to tell him what happened to his once-living counterpart. She whimpered out the one word she despised saying, and the hologram flickered, replacing the smiling Doctor with a more sad, remorseful looking man.

"You're wondering why I did it. I did it because I've had enough. In two thousand five hundred years of time travel, I've seen too much. I've seen too much death, caused too many deaths, and just hurt way too many people. I'm sorry I had to put you through that, Clara. If I hurt you in any way at all in a rage, trust me, I didn't mean it. There's been too many people who have put their own lives on the line to save mine, and I don't want you to have to die too.

"I want to keep you as safe as I can. You're special, Clara Oswald, and it's not just because you've died twice before now. There had to be a reason for that, right? Well, you're part-Time Lord. You're my wife, River, and I's daughter. You thought you were human, and I don't blame you. You were raised by human parents...River decided to make a fake birth cetificate and send you away to live with your human family, who had unknowingly miscarried. You were the baby your human mother thought she had given birth to.

"Again Clara, I am so, so sorry you had to witness it if you did, or hurt you if I did. Just please...don't let the TARDIS die, or rot, or get bored. She's your's now. Take her across the universe...just keep her in good shape.

"Goodbye, Clara."

The hologram flickered off.

Clara could only stare.

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_**A/N: Two faves/reviews for the next chapter! c:**_

_**-Rave/Berry**_


	3. Blue Lips

_**A/N: Here it is, chapter three! I found a great post on Tumblr that helped me with the depiction of the Doctor in this chapter. Enjoy! c:**_

"Oh…oh my god…" Clara whispered. Her stomach churned, not only with grief now, but surprise. Her? The Doctor's daughter? And who was this 'River'?

A thousand thoughts ran through her head, and she held her hands against her ears and clenched her eyes shut, as if that would make them stop. She needed somewhere, to think. She needed someone, to think with. Clara needed the Doctor. She needed his brilliance. She needed her father. There was that stabbing pain in her heart again - he was there. But not really. Physically laying right in front of her, spirit, or true being, gone. Clara opened her eyes a crack, looking at the body on the bed.

He looked like he was in a deep sleep, except for telltale signs that he really was…dead. The Doctor was relaxed, he didn't look strained, and despite the fact that Clara had virtually dragged his body to this room, he was in a relatively natural sleeping position that one might have been, on their back, arms at their sides and legs not completely straight and together. There were though, the signs that he'd drowned. His skin looked tight, and it had become pale and ashen, his lips blue and his hair was soaked. As well as those, there was his eerie stillness. No settling rise and fall of his chest, no gentle snore, no, as Clara had seen before, mumbling in his sleep. The Doctor was still.

It scared Clara, to see him like this. Not moving, not…being the Doctor.

The silence in the TARDIS was startling. Not even the ship herself seemed to be making a noise, as if she too was mourning her Time Lord. Clara couldn't stand the eerie quiet, it was a maddening sound, the silent after death. She almost thought she could hear the Doctor's voice, just saying her name, over and over, agonisingly faintly.

There was a distant noise, that came from down the corridor of the TARDIS. Clara was about to exit the room when a woman with a mane of curly blonde hair almost knocked her off her feet by barging through the door. The curly-haired woman looked at the Doctor's body on the bed. Her eyes shot to Clara, and before she knew what was happening, the curly-haired woman had pinned Clara to the wall, shaking her.

"What the hell have you done to him!" She yelled, staring into Clara's eyes with anger, "You killed him, didn't you? Who _are_ you?"

"I'm Clara-" Clara tried to shake free of the curly-haired woman's iron grip, "Oswald! I'm traveling with him!" But then she remembered they wouldn't be traveling together, ever. "…well, I was." Clara felt her eyes fill with tears. The blonde woman's hamds moved from Clara's shirt collar to her shoulders, and she guided the shaking, crying girl to the chair by the Doctor's bed. The Doctor's relative-to-sleeping look had turned to a state that you could positively tell he was dead. His skin had turned a sickly waxy, purple colour, his lips had lost their blue tint, now very pale, but the blue colour had moved to his hands. Clara took one look at him, and felt sick. She never thought the Doctor would have met his end like this - she never thought she'd see him die. Clara thought if he ever were to die that he would've went out protecting someone dear to him. The Doctor, in all his centuries of lonliness, and lies, and mysteries and other traumas, had become his greatest danger. The Doctor had been, for a long time, his biggest fear, his worst enemy. The most dangerous creature, hiding in the dark, was the Doctor himself.

The curly-haired woman had put herself between Clara and the Doctor. Clara watched her look over the Time Lord, as if inspecting - looking for signs as to what killed him. She gasped as she realised, and turned and kneeled to Clara's level on the chair.

"He...He drowned himself, didn't he?" The woman whispered, and Clara nodded, recounting the moment she heard the splash of his body crashing through the water's barrier and down, down, down, to the bottom of the pool. "You're probably wondering why I'm here, who I am, and how I got here, right?"

"Yes," Clara murmured.

"I'm Doctor River Song. I came here because I got a message that something bad had happened in the TARDIS, through my vortex manipulator - which ultimately brought me here. When no one was in the console room...I came here, and here I am." River Song explained. Clara's eyes widdened. River Song. Wasn't this the woman the hologram-Doctor had talked about, the Doctor's wife? Her real mother.

"You were the one he said about," Clara whispered, "Said you took me away to grow up with human parents when I was a baby." River looked shocked for a moment, then her features reformed into a comforting smile.

River put her arms around Clara, and Clara put her arms around River. Daughter cried into mother's golden hair, and mother tried to comfort her scared and confused and hurt daughter, while father lay in a never ending sleep, finally free of everything that had been following him throughout his long and painful life.

_**A/N: Let me know in a review if you guys want a chapter four, and what you'd like in a chapter four! Also, please check out my other fanfictions. This seems to be my most popular, and while I'm happy it's actually taken off, I don't want this to be the only fanfiction I'm known for. Ta!**_

_**-Rave/Berry**_


	4. UNIT

_**A/N: It's remarkable how fast these updates are coming. .o. Okay, chapter four, here we go!**_

Four hours passed as River tried to get Clara to calm down. She'd gone into hysterics, screaming that it was her fault the Doctor had decided to take his final plunge into the darkness of the TARDIS swimming pool. Clara went the worst when River tried to move her out of the Doctor's room, about two hours after the panic attack started. Guiding Clara out of the room, she'd caught a glimpse of the Doctor on the bed.

His skin had left the ashen, pale state and had began to turn a disgusting purple. His eyes seemed to have sunken into his skull, and Clara had lost it completely. She fell to the floor, holding her face in her hands and screamed and cried. She felt her stomach go tight and churn, making her feel sick. River had to all but drag her back to a bedroom across the hall that read 'Clara' on its door.

"You know, I think I have a way we can send him out that'll honour him like nothing else," River had said after Clara had calmed down, "The Doctor told me that a while ago, an alien species tried to fake his death, and a government organisation - UNIT - prepared him a lead-lined coffin and a rocket, to send him up to space. We could go back to UNIT's base - I never heard that they used it." Clara though for a moment. It seemed to proper way to honour a man who'd spent hundreds of years roaming the universe and time, let the Doctor keep exploring, forevermore.

"Yes," Clara murmured, "That sounds like a brilliant idea. He would've liked that, I think," She chukled a little bit, "Look at me, being all cliche." River smiled a smile that didn't reach her eyes, patting Clara's shoulder, as she stood and exited the room.

"I'll set course to UNIT's headquaters. If you want, you can get some sleep, you've been through a lot today." Clara nodded. She rested her head back on her pillow, and almost instantly fell into a restless slumber.

She dreamed about the Doctor. She dreamed about the time he saved her from the predator wi-fi, their visit to the Rings of Akhaten, that had left him in a bit of a state. All their adventures flashed before Clara's sleeping eyes, and then it all stopped. She was in a white room with no ending or beginning. Sitting a little away from her on a white cube was the Doctor, still in his purple jacket with the purple bow tie. He didn't look frightening or dead, he looked as happy as he had before his issues started to show to Clara. He looked up when he heard Clara's footsteps, and just as quick as she'd noticed he'd stood, he had enveloped her in a hug.

"I'm sorry, Clara," He whispered into her ear, "I'm so, so sorry you've had to see me in that state. But there's no way I could live having you in danger all the time - you're...you're the last one..." His voice trailed off, "You have to stay alive. I wouldn't be able to let you die." Clara was still being held in a tight embrace by the Doctor, and she felt him shake slightly, "I can't hurt anyone else here."

"You would never hurt anyone in your life," Clara whispered.

"You'd be surprised. In a few centuries of time travel, I've met hundred of beautiful people. I've changed them, given them a reason to live...But there's always those few that I see, and they always seem disappointed in me, what I've become..." He pulled away from Clara.

"I had seen it before Clara, I am, and always have been, a little bit mad. I took companions to see time and the universe so I could keep myself away from myself. But there was always going to come the time that even the companions wouldn't help," He said, "I've been a danger to myself ever since I took a beautiful blonde girl away to see the stars and lost her on a beach in Norway." Clara saw the tears on his cheeks before the Doctor felt them, and he wiped them away quickly.

The colours of the Doctor seemed to be fading into the white. Clara reached out to touch him, but her hand went through him, and she was left in this dream world, alone.

Then she woke in her bed in the TARDIS. The door had been left open and a crack and the lights to her room dimmed so that the beautiful glowing patterns of Gallifreyan writing shone with a golden light. It was mesmorising, the gorgeous patterns of golden circles and swirls. They reminded Clara of the universe, a forever beautiful pattern of circles and glows.

River's voice snapped Clara out of her thoughts. She left the room, and saw that some uniformed men were in the Doctor's room. She couldn't see the Doctor, however. River was talking to them.

"Yes...he- he committed suicide. Drowned himself, held back on regeneration and just...died." Clara could see her golden hair in the room, looking away from the Doctor.

The person River was speaking to, a woman with shoulder-length, straight, blonde hair, nodded, "It's a shame, that I never saw him after he saved Earth from those black cubes. He was truly brilliant." Clara watched from the door way as four men, one on each corner, lifted a brown coffin and let River and the other woman take the lead. River signaled for Clara to go with them, and with the four men in uniform carrying the coffin holding the Doctor, they exited the TARDIS, into a long corridor.

The uniformed men hauling the Doctor's coffin left down another hall. Clara and River were lead to a room you could've called a bedroom, and the blonde woman finally introduced herself to Clara.

"I'm Kate Stewart, head of UNIT. My father was a good friend of the Doctor's, and I met him once. I'm sorry about all this moving-and-relocating business, but tomorrow, we'll hold the Doctor's funeral. We'll have the rocket prepared, and it will be launched with him within. A truly great exit for an even greater Time Lord."

_**A/N: Yeah, next chapter, the Doctor's funeral. Two faves/reviews and I'll post it! Don't forget to check out my other fanfics! c: Also, the "he was in quite a state" after Akhaten, is a fanfiction I'm yet to start, so stay tuned for that!**_

_**-Rave/Berry**_


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